e&&& 




Mh IjiMf of Ik iSmuliful 



HKLIVERED BEFORE THE 



ENOSINIAN SOCIETY 






COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, 



I 



OTIS T. MASOU, .A. . UVL" 



JUNE 22, 1863. 



WASHINGTON: 

MoGILL & WITHEROW, PRWTEKS AND STEREOTYPE};.-. 



1863. 






^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 



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i)[je ©jwif of ifo IBihiuJ 



M* 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



ENOSINIAN SOCIETY 



7)^9 



- TV, 



OTIS T. 'MASO IST, .A. . &£ 



JUNE 22, 1863. 



WASHINGTON: 

MoGILL & WIT&EROW, PRINTERS AND 8TEREOTYPER5 

1863. 



-fS* &t1 - 



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College Hill, November 12, 1863. 
Dear Sin : 

At a meeting of the Enosinian Society held November 7th, 1863, it was 
unanimously resolved, that the thanks of the Society be tendered you for the 
very beautiful poem recited before them on the occasion of their Annual 
Celebration in June last ; also, that a copy of your poem be requested for 
publication. 

In accordance with the above, the undersigned were appointed a committee 
to notify you of the action of the Society. 
Very respectfully, your obedient servants, 

THOMAS S. SAMSON, 
REGINALD FENDALL, 
W. F. C. MORSELL, 

Committee. 
Otis T. Mason, A. M. 



Washington, December 1, 1863. 
T. S. Samson and Gentlemen of the Committee : 

You have kindly asked a copy of the poem delivered before your Society 
in June last, for publication. As it is the property of the Society, I cheer- 
fully submit it to your disposal. 
Truly yours, &c, 

0. T. MASON. 



For here's a paper written in his hand, 
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain. 



r Nothing, Act V, Sc. 4. 



?.#im. 



Kind Enosinians ! at your gracious call 

We come, to render at the shrine of song 

Our lowly offering. While from trench and wall 

The war cry drives the tide of death along, 

And men are tossing on this troubled sea 

Of blood ; while women wail and orphans shriek, 

And famine mocks, and the reality 

Has stripped the pageantry from war, there speaks 

A voice familiar, higher than the storm, 

Whose sweetness faileth not in every hour 

To calm the troubled waters of alarm, 

By the sweet magic of its wondrous power, — 

The seraph's voice, that rules the Beautiful, 

Whose inspiration, in diverse degree, 

Thrills all her children meek and dutiful, 

Thrilleth the highest, thrilleth you and me. 

To-night we come, as they were wont of old, 

Whose songs resounding stirred the blue iEgean, 

To add one humble tribute, not of gold, 

Or incense, or the sanguinary paean ; 

Content are we to pluck the lowliest flower, 

To deck her altar for the passing hour. 

One shrine there is where every spirit pays 
Its homage, bowing lowlily, and feels 
A living vigor there, prepared to raise 
It from the altar stool whereon it kneels ; 



Whereat the babe holds out its tiny arms ; 
Whose radiance lightens up the school boys' face ; 
That gleams auroral o'er the maiden's charms 
Where love inhales its energy and grace ; 
Where sturdy manhood locked in the embrace 
Of lovely womanhood its light implores ; 
Where age, o'erfurrowed by times truest trace, 
Some long-chased, flying phantom shape adores ; 
Where each fond mother immolates her pride ; 
And each proud father heeds some call of faith 
To sacrifice a darling son, to guide 
The hand of fortune, empty flattering wraith; 
Where every mourner goes to dry his tears ; 
Where each sad heart some faint relief would find ; 
Guilt hath a hope along the wrecking years, 
To wear at last the misery from the mind; 
Whence faith looks far, far up the starry dome, 
As high in height as low her lowliness, 
And waiteth.long for the blest hour to come, 
Of full fruition, and of swift redress. 
There's many a shrine, and many a triumph car 
Worshipped before by all the giddy throng; 
Yet that of Beauty hath more votaries far, 
Than bear the echoing of their praise along. 

Our lives are that, the mode of which is prayer 
For strength in weakness, for the manly will 
To face with courage, for a heart to bear 
The judgments time shall pass and shall fulfill ; 
But most of all a prayer that we may see 
The unscanned Beauty of eternity. 

Our wants are many, for the craving heart 
Is ever hoping, e'er aspiring higher; 
Nor lets one moment to th' Unknown depart, 
It has not fraught with some intense desire. 
Yet, could we shake the grqssness from the mind, 
And more and more grow God-like, till the ear 
Of our quick souls could catch the note that told 
Man's deepest yearning and profoundest fear, 



9 



Then could we stand mid-;dr while earth went round, 

Uplifting as it rolled one general wail, 

The tidal wave of sorrow; this one sound 

Above the shoreless sea would most prevail : 

Take knowledge, culture, every hot desire; 

Give us of soul-stirred sorrow no surcease ; 

Try us till tried in the refining fire, 

But give, oh! give us, Beauty's smiling face. 

Give us to feel that this is not the verge 

Of hope, where mind and soul and spirit all 

Conflict; and these enfolding forms but urge 

The doom, the death, the fearful wreck of all. 

Oh God ! thou art a mocker, and we crowned 

Aright thy Christ with thorns ; His sacred feet 

Were wearied, and the raging rabble bound 

And crucified Him rightly ; it was meet, 

If war, wetshod in gore, and widow's weeds, 

And orphan tears, and starveling cries, and wail 

Of the wild requiem over our misdeeds, 

Go all unheeded — all be born to fail. 

But naught shall fail, since Beauty's highest height 

Is reached in Him, the source of all her light; 

For, could the grave anoint with healing clay — 

As Christ the man's born blind — our failing eyes, 

Then, in life's river washed, they'd ope to see 

Earth's brightest beacon. Faith, elate, would rise 

First on the sight ; and with each human hope 

Would — more than they that watch for morning — wait 

For harmony ; each prescient heart would cope 

With angel heralds, hurrying to her gate. 

Thou, dearer far than life ! By the same faith 
With which we trust The Life, The Truth, The Way, 
Believe we, whatsoe'er our longing saith 
Of thee, shall reach us in a brighter day. 
E'en here, where social ties have bound in one 
Speech, nations, empires, or the roving band ; 
Where'er the light of Learning hath begun 
To gleam, though ne'er so faintly, o'er a land, 



10 



Some sacred shrine to thee they've singled out ; 
Some mountain grotto, some secluded dell, 
Where, all the noisy world barred safely out, 
They might at times with thee in rapture dwell. 

Thou sweet inspirer of the measured lay ! — 
Who wert, when Paradise serenely slept, 
A shadowy forecast of the yet to be 
Developed purpose, all securely kept 
In the ordaining mind of Him, who spake, 
And each material and ethereal thing- 
Became a word, the form articulate 
Of His intention and predestining; 
Who art thyself a word, interpreted 
Creator, giving life to something dead — 
Come ! heal our halting feet, our fainting hearts; 
Teach us to keep sweet time to love's refrain ; 
Crimson our pallid cheeks ; haste to impart 
A lustre to our eyes, whose souls would fain 
With thee now mount the ever-steepening way, 
Down which thy sacred feet to us have trcd; 
That we from thine own lips may learn thy lay : 
Which, lisping o'er till learned, along the road 
That skirts this lowland, when thy sun hath set 
With all for which its genial beams were given, 
We'll reach thy sphere, where sweeter chords than yet 
We've heard shall sweep us through the gates of heaven. 
We wait before thy gate for a reply 
To Se*edrs question. What, what is truth ? 
If we describe thee falsely, or deny 
Thy truthful form, we beg thy light and ruth. 

There was a time when not a glittering star 

Went gently gliding in its restless round ; 

When not an angel glory gleamed afar, 

Or angel finger silence waked to sound ; 

When God, existing free, unmanifest 

Save in the mirror of his own deep love, 

Sublimely pleased, sat silently and blest; 

And this bright scene, this is the scheme he wove, 



11 



Where formed He, first among the shining host, 
The " Inspiration Angel," beauty-born, 
Foreshadowing the glory of all time, 
His minister to bear His praise along — 
The herald of a prophet more sublime. 

Before th' empyreal throne, lowly reclining, 

And leaning on her hand her peerless head, 

Intent she gazed about her, as divining 

The mystery there, by her and all unread, 

While the deep travail of his purposing 

Brings forth the shape, and while he breathes upon 

And adds the bold, distinctive surfacing 

Of angel, seraph, satellite, or sun. 

Then, stooping down to her, the fairest born 

Of all the creatures of his spirit-realm, 

Saw in her face the blush of Beauty's morn, 

Parted her golden locks, and from the helm 

Of his vast kingdom, pointed to a cloud 

Peeriug afar, upon the very verge 

Of the wide welkin, duskily endowed 

With shape, from chaos merging to emerge. 

There, daughter, shalt thou amplify thy soul, 

Till, as the dew of morning, thy sweet breath 

Suffusing all, thy crested wave shall roll 

Its interripplings over life and death. 

Bowing, the angel said "I will obey;" 

And lightly skimmed adown th' ethereal main, 

Followed along her shining embassy 

By kindred voices in this sad refrain : 

" We shall miss thee, sister spirit ! 

Turned from those who here adore thee, 
Though each smile you here inherit, 
Trust us, there shall hover o'er thee. 

" Demons curse thee, downward shrinking, 
Tremble, dreading trouble pending, 
Sorrow unto pain are linking, 
Envious glances at thee sending. 



12 



" Father loviDg, heart impressing 

Spirit, Christ the Son endearing, 

Kindred watch thee swift addressing 

To the throne of thy appearing." 

^/ 

And thus, innumerable cycles back 

That mark the circling of the years around, 

When this firm earth was but a- vapory tract, 

To neither motion, law, nov season bound, 

The angel of Imagination stood 

Communing with her heart, and conning o'er 

The far-off' compound interest of good 

At last accruing on the nether shore, 

Where, freed from our pent orbing round and round, 

We'll catch the perfect music of the spheres, 

And ever on a higher mission bound, 

Shall burgeon out along the glowing years. 

There in the crucible of time she wrought 

The hills, " rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," 

Pressed down the valleys, smote the rocks enfraught 

With prattling streamlets dancing as they run ; 

There dashed the waves, that wore their barriers rife 

With bays and seas pushed inward on the land ; 

There veined the mountains with their precious life, 

And gemmed the streamlets with their jewel sand; 

Threw wide the windows of the firmament 

To catch the twinkling of the golden stars ; 

Spread her green sward ; evoked the infinite 

Of loveliness apparent everywhere ; 

There gave a dreamy azure to the air, 

And fancy loosed to wanton with the clouds, 

When nature reveled in her embryo year, 

And vocal grandeur sang her praise aloud. 

Those for all men. Some sacred shrines she marks 
Within her temples, where her altars stand ; 
Where each crowned priest from year to year enarks 
The gems of love that sparkle from her hand ; 
Eden the lovely, prologue to them all j 
Ida, renowned for Beauty's victory ; 



13 



Olympus, Jove's high thundering capitol ; 
The vale of Tempe, where the muses stray ; 
Sweet Helicon, where Phoebus struck his lyre ; 
Dread Eleusis, the poet's mystery ; 
Arcadia, home of harmoDy retired ; 
Bright Athens, Pallas' famed consistory ; 
The vine-clad hills where Virgil had his birth ; 
The Switzer's home and valley, beauty-shrined ; 
The stern Norse warrior's icy rugged earth ; 
The cliffs of Albion, cradled in the brine ; 
Columbia, chosen by the will of God 
To bear the shout of liberty along ; 
Nor last, the land by holier feet o'ertrod, 
She gave to sacred heavenly-burdened song. 
Thus garnished, back to Eden bowers she flew. 
The tinkling bluebells heard aloft in heaven, 
Stirred by her drapery that tripped the dew, 
Cried list ! till he she wrought it for be given. 
Ten thousand hovering angel voices sang : 

Sister we have heard the tinkle 
Of the bluebells, far above thee 

In the skies ; — 
Looked, and lo ! the matiu ingle 
Was dissolved, again to mingle 

Myriad dyes ; — 

Heard a voice, " Come let us make him " 
(Sweetly spake that voice above thee :) 

" Of the dust. 
In our image let us make him," 
Saying, " Let earth's angel take him, 

To her trust." 

Now we come to see thee press him, 
Press him as did He above thee, 

To thy heart ; — 
Come to see thee first caress him, 
Come to hover o'er and bless him 

For our part. 



14 

The spirit of that song took life and shone 
On every scope. In every sound outrang, 
' We wait, to exalt and garland o'er thy throne.' 

There, like another God, did she enseize 

The soul of him so like the Son of Man, 

And seized his tongue, and from the bowed knees 

Of humble faith, with influence that can 

Move the dread arm that wields the universe, 

Watching his ripening spirit, till one thought 

Form of the outward, on the mind's reverse 

Entablature was graven ; then she caught 

The imagery, and audibly upon the air, 

Straightway within the ear, the vocal frame 

Set up, the bodying of the spirit there, 

The words that lend us to the roll of fame. 

Yet once again, her friendly aid applied 

In Eden, when in sleep she lulls to rest 

Her ward, till from his intersected side, 

Eve leaps, all panoplied. Here she suppressed 

The anticpuated word, the stern old root, 

To form the richer, sweeter, gaylier dressed, 

Prolific dialect of the graffed shoot 

On the wild olive for delicious fruit. 

Then to the pair. Image of God and form ! 
Ye I must trust, as I would trust your God. 
Trusted too far, hence all this loss and harm, 
Hence hatred, sorrow, and the valley clod. 

Sang she, " Sisters, see my love, 
There's sorrow in his home to-night ; 
My dream said he shall walk above, 
His joy has taken flight. 

" Will ye leave him naked now ? 
His fall will cry aloud, for ye 
May yet succeed to make him bow 
Again the stubborn knee. 

" Faith, with all thy sister train, 
Sweet Hope, with every glittering ray, 



15 



And Love, high hovering o'er the twain, 
Will ye then away ?" 

Thus mourned she, till their echoed back a choir 
Of sounds uncertain, jarring in the air, 
" We will — perhaps — at times we will, but higher, 
Farewell ! forever farewell ! guilty pair." 
But Love delaying took she by the hand, 
And kneeling there before the fiery gate, 
There came a voice, " Together ye'll remand 
The humbled victim to a higher state. 
The serpent's head the woman's seed shall bruise, 
And slowly pressing on the brain of sin> 
Shall grind him in his native dust, aud loose 
The chain that binds her to that she hath been." 
Then rising from the altar stool of earth, 
They tripped from dewy morn till dusky even, 
Along the devious way of woe and mirth, 
That leads through beggary to a home in heaven. 

Conscience has lost the way of righteousness ; 
Keason but weakly binds to truthfulness ; 
Will fails to hold the helm with steadiness ; 
Fancy opposes wrong's unpleasantness 
With nature's beauty ; but the tethered eye 
Grows sick and wearies, seeing o'er and o'er. 
The little bounded round of sweets that lie 
For eye and ear of each, forces the door 
Of our desires, that will not sate till all 
The unscanned beauty of the dancing spheres 
Commanded be to tend each spirit call, 
And pour its music on our quickened ears. 
All nature's beauty and her dissonance 
Are but the plastic clay, from which she moulds 
A statue of th' ethereal forms, which chance 
Before her sentient fancy hath unrolled. 
These are her magic wand, wherewith to ope 
Love's gateway of her by-road to the soul 
That ever felt a thrill of joy, or hope 
Hath ever urged along to glory's goal. 



16 

With it she touched the Child; the future man 

Or woman full exemplified, appears 
To comprehend th' importance of his span, 

Or all the mother runs before the years. 

She touched the Youth; and airy castles rise 
To kiss the flecking of each floating cloud 

Which charms the dust of labor from the eyes, 
And hides the scull beneath a crimsoned shroud. 

She touched the Maiden ; from her gleaming eye 
Flashed out upon some heart the fatal shock 

Of true heart lightning, rifting hopelessly 
The citadel of love, till its base rock. 

She touched the Mother ; — shall I touch a theme 
Too sacred for th' archangel's fiery tongue ? — 

Then gushed the fountain of earth's sweetest stream, 
A mother's love. Oh stream, forever run. 

She touched the Exile, far away he heard 
The welcome warble of his mother-tongue, 

Like the first warble of the welcome bird 

That greets the spring when all around is young. 

She touched the Chain that bound a righteous cause ; 

To shake th' oppressor, as at Philippi, 
Bidding her chosen abrogate his laws 

Unrighteous, daring there to do or die. 

She touched the Miser; and his jaundiced eye 
Gave to the world the yellow hue of gold ; 

Gilt was his head and heart ; to sell and buy 
He'll risk his soul, till his last knell is knolled. 

She touched the Tyrant; and the clanking chain 
Were mellow music, matched with all the choirs 

That harmonize in heaven's sweet refrain, 
When all the saintly fingers sweep their lyres. 



3 



I 



She touched the Warrior ; and his nodding pluiue, 
Dashed with the hue of cloud and blood and fire, 

Brushed off' the hate of strife and sorrow's gloom, 
And gentle fingers swept the flattering lyre. 

She touched the Drunkard ; and the reeling wreck 
Went down ingulfed in death's relentless sea, 

Glad if these fiendish phantom shapes could deck 
His life, and thrill him in eternity. 

There's not a heart so rude she passeth by ; 

The faintest life hath vigor lent of hope, 

And ever and anou weaves gaylily 

The flowers of fancy plucked on every slope. 

Thus kindly deals with all ; with special ruth 

She leads her chosen through still vales, and bj 

Vauclusian fountains of unfading youth, 

To plume their flight for immortality. 

She taught the sculptor's chisel to evoke 

From the cold marble, beauty everywhere 

In myriad forms, until her crowning stroke, 

A Venus or Apollo Belvidere, 

Some architectural triumph have adorned. 

Her monuments are seen uplifted high, 

In pyramid and obelisk ; have formed 

A bridge's eyebrow o'er a sparkling eye ; 

Greet us in giant battlements four-square, 

Against the foe who seeks to crush the laud, 

Or graceful capitol, uprearing where 

Apollo spreads his gift with liberal hand. 

Resting from labor, as the maker soul 

That breathed her being into anxious life, 

She plants the high Acropolis, the goal 

Of toil, and bares her sacrificial knife, 

To offer up her temple. gift of elegance — 

An architectural Sabbath to the heart, 

Apart, and far above the dissonance 

Of the rude clacking in the world's loud mart. 

She prompts the soul that moves the hand that guides 
The pencil, to impress the shadowing 



l: 



Of the ideal, when its form resides 
In all the synthesis of coloring. 

Gives to each passion some key-note, to suit 
The harmony that wakes it through the ear; 
Then fills the void with music, till the mute 
Spirit would dream the choral welkin near. 

And yet more delicately touched, 

The poet's mind, pure as Ilissus, couched 

In fancy's dreamy verdure, where she hides 

Her numerous offspring. Ever at her breath 

They sally forth ; and being borne above 

Upon the mist, that like a cloudy wreath 

Is lifted by the genial beams of love, 

She clothes them in the babbling of the stream 

That sometimes trickles from a ruptured vein ; 

Sometimes goes gently gliding as a dream ; 

Sometimes leaps wildly down and purls again, 

Just coping round the pebbles ; then at play 

With the wild bluff, goes eddying round and round. 

Thus run's the poet's brain from theme to theme; 

Nought is too rugged or too sweet for sound, 

From the blared bugle to the sunset gleam. 

She leads him o'er the pastoral, and chants 

Her Georgics to the rustic swain ; nay, lends 

In rudest times to memory, if she wants 

Her aid to eternize. Her genius blends 

With hoi rid war and battle-shrieks; and when 

War is an art, sends down through every age, 

In the grand Epic, all the praise of men ; 

She scathes in Satire every cruel ban ; 

Chases in Comic mirth to her abode ; 

Dashes in murderous Tragic on the clan 

Of bloody wrongs, or sparkles in the Ode. 

As to the workman's hand his tools, so to 
The hand of th' Inspiration Angel stood 
Art, Music, Poesy, wherewith to do 
Her work, and reap the golden crop of good. 



10 



Her labors greet us in our joyous hours; 

Nor these alone, but in the saddest scene. 

She weaves a garland of the sweetest flowers, 

And dying Nature clothes in gayest green. 

As shame hurts pride, and hides from hot desire 

Beneath a flimsy fig-leaf covering, 

The fetid form, the sombre weeds, the pyre, 

Offend the high seraphic hovering 

Of Beauty's Angel, hiding in the grave 

The casket of the disembodied soul ; 

Hiding the hate of death beneath the wave 

Of oue wide scope of beauty, o'er the whole 

Where, 'neath her feet, the grasses wave and bloom, 

And myriad daisies, feeding on the dead, 

Shroud the cold clay ; or where the gorgeous tomb 

Or mausoleum deck the low-lain head. 

She names Death Sleep ; upon the canvas, bids 

A purer life breath out of every line ; 

Wafts a sweet quiet o'er the heavy lids 

Of the flushed eye, at Music's holy shrine ; 

Wraps the sad spirit in the sable weeds 

Of the elegiac, bodying out the gloom 

Of inward loneliness, or ere it feeds 

Upon a life o'ertoppliug to its doom. 

Should weary reason tremble on its throne, 
Her voice could lull the maniac back to peace, 
Whom " melancholy marketh for her own," 
Her voice could charm again to liveliness. 

Boom the loud cannon o'er the watery waste, 
The dead rise up we grappled for in vain ; 
So science grapples for the truth thou sayest, 
Down deep and wide about her vast domain ; 
■Yet mighty truths in their fair light have loomed, 
When o'er the reaching tide her voice hath boomed. 

Oft on the tented field hath freedom called 
Her few devoted sons, to feel the blow 
Of tyrants, or of traitors ; unappalled 
They follow on, and oft have laid them low. 



20 



But Pride again hath dashed the rowels deep 

Into the side of lust, ambition, greed, 

And nigh o'erridden liberty, to reap 

A bloody harvest, on her fertile meed ; 

There courage bleeding lay ; revenge that lit 

The torch, that smote, that cleft ; and^hope 

That pointed through the bloody gorge, through it 

To brighter scenes, both faint along the slope. 

Then when the battle breeze hath rent their trust, 

And shock of doom hath given the palm to pride, 

When fire of trial tried the true and just, 

Deep in each heart, her still small voice replied, 

" Sons of your sires, awake ! 
To arms ! To arms ! 
War, when your name's at stake, 

Hath no alarms. 
Die for your children's sake ! 
Blood for them warms ; 
Then for your watchword take, 
Our wives, our homes ! 
Strike for the civil bond, lay down your souls 
For God, for right ; to wrong deal a death dole. 

" Gladly your father's bled, 
Suffered and died ; 
Gladly they flung the stead 

Of joy aside. 
You their dear children fed, 
Grew at their side, 
Nursed by the hand they wed, 
Fond mother's pride ; 
The flag of justice shadowing their sod, 
They gave to you, religion, and to God. 

"Ne'er let your children say 
Ye were a craven, 
Ne'er let them know the day- 
Fear was engraven. 



21 



Fight for them, strike home ! slay ! 
Till red the heavens — 
Then hope of your partner clay 
To be forgiven. 
Give them a proud emblem to deck their sky, 
In solemn court ye'll meet them bye and bye." 

Then flashed the dawn of freedom far and wide — 
Then fled her invader to his utmost bound ; 
Fired by her battle-song, her stalwart pride 
Lays the grim giant weltering in his wound. 
Oh, song immortal ! may'st thou ever be 
The guard of virtue, liberty, and right ! 
Be thou to cheer them in the thickest fight, 
And kiss them with a glorious victory. 

Thus roll her orbs of love and gracefulnes, 
Where every new-born Paradise appears ! 
Her seasons run with willing haste to bless, 
And magnify, and hail her through the years : 
First, clad in Iris' spring-time, blossom-flecked, 
And beauty crowned — embannered far and wide ; 
In silver radiant summer, harvest-decked — 
In nature glorified and purified; 
As golden autumn — mellow, flowing o'er 
With all the gladsome wine of steep and glen — 
Beneath whose shows the embryo bud and flower 
Of their next season, forms beyond our ken ; 
Then weary wiDter-robed, when they are gone — 
These beauteous ones — to cheer the heart no more; 
But in its cradle sheath is slumbering on 
The bud; and, mother-like, the storms weep o'er; 
The wild winds rock, and birds sing o'er its nest, 
Till later springs shall wake it from its rest ; 
So, some would say, the works of art sublime 
No more shall rise and greet a glowing age; 
Chilled by the breath of truth, their blossom time 
No more will glisten on time's ample page ! 
No more the glittering of their golden stars 
Rise, triumph o'er us, set, and rise again, 



22 



Eclipsed by science, bursting througb tbe bars 

Of her dark night, and beaming from her fane. 

But music too, and poesy, and art, 

Her kin, may live beyond the frost of wrong ; 

For while there's life-blood in the world's great heart, 

Shall their warm sunshine urge its flow along. 

Though never more a Homer's ample lay 

Embalm the story of heroic times, 

Or Raphael's spirit with the rainbow play — 

Or Phidias rear the type of Beauty's lines; 

(So howled the critics of our mother isle, 

When Milton once again took up the lute ; 

But Milton's song shall rule our homely style 

For many a year when Homer's song is mute ;) 

Whene'er again a call comes o'er the waste, 

To conquer strife or cheat the world of pain, 

Earth's brightest angel waiteth calm and chaste 

To meet our yearnings and our fears restrain. 

Though far aback along the misty way, 

Old forms that now o'ertopple to their doom, 

High-reared excluding us from light of day, 

May see the prophet of their downfall loom, 

Yet bar the window of the soul, that drinks 

The rustic gabble of a giddy sphere, 

And lull the spirit nerve until it sinks 

To that calmness the upper angels wear ; 

Far up the dusky aisle the quickened ear 

May catch sweet strains of loftier music far 

Than swelled or died along the wrecking years 

Of time. Bright as an undimmed star, 

Hand grasping hand — she winds the devious way 

Of piety, religion at her side, 

Tuning the heartstrings to a lasting lay 

Of accents, broken on this ruthless tide 

Of life, perfected in eternity. 

She thrills the Christian mother o'er her child, 

In songs that echo through the man to be, 

She gives to us when the hot heart is wild, 

To her beloved, songs to cheer the night; 

Whose chorus caught is sent from shore to shore. 



23 



Till now, when Sabbath morn, alike the bright 

Leader of tides, revolves around and o'er 

The earth, upward is borne a tidal wave 

Of sacred music over land and sea, 

In every tongue — the highest and the slave 

Rejoice together o'er the man to be. 

And yet a higher bound is set to song 

Immortal, in a wider circle where 

Adown death's rugged steep the trains sweep on 

Through the dark river, to the home wherein 

One universal praise shall crown their days, 

With her sole empress in the golden strife 

Wherein discord has failed, and in her praise 

Her faithful votaries pass an endless life. 



